Say 'No' to Exam Stress

The Easy to Use Programme to Survive Exam Nerves

Anthony James

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367482565
• eBook ISBN: 9781000202182
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Exams are important. The results can change lives and stressing about them can damage performance and undermine young peoples' confidence. This exam stress management programme requires very little time or effort to use and provides a straightforward, practical guide to exam stress management.

Written by an experienced educational psychologist, this short, explanatory book is accompanied by simple, easy to follow audio files which lead the listener through a sequence of five relaxation sessions to reduce stress, increase focus and plan for success. Using the book as a guide you simply listen to the audio tracks and follow what they say. All tracks have been designed so that they are easy to digest and applicable in the middle of a busy day. To sum up, this book:

• Provides practical and easy to follow steps to help anyone cope with exam stress

• Teaches relaxation techniques that can be used to reduce stress wherever you find it

• Offers a real stress knowledge base to teachers and family members supporting students with exam stress

This important guide is suitable for secondary school students as well as college and university students. The easy to follow relaxation sessions will be of interest to anyone studying for examinations who wishes to lower their exam stress levels.

1

A brief overview of the stress management programme

Read this chapter first

Too busy

You may be too busy to read all ten chapters in the programme and so the whole course has been concisely set out in this single chapter. This gives you all the basics. You can read other chapters at your leisure.

There are five audio relaxation sessions in this programme, and listening to each recording takes only 15–20 minutes. This may be helpful to students who are too busy studying to do much about managing the stress which often goes with studying and exams. Typically you would listen to one audio recoding per week, although more often if you wish. It is important to listen to the audio recordings in order, 1–5.

Who is the programme for?

This programme is designed to help college and school students who are under stress from forthcoming exams. In practice, there is no upper age limit. In order to be effective, stress management techniques must be designed in a straightforward style; complexity can lead to stress. The same, simple programme suits a wide age range.

Underlying structure

This stress management programme is easy to follow, but there is some carefully structured thinking behind it. The principle is similar to the writing of a film or play. You may be watching a simple interaction of the characters but the script writers have created the plot, an underlying structure. This is designed to hold your attention by tapping into themes which interest you as a human being such as love, betrayal, rejection, triumph of the underdog and so on. The design of this stress management programme is similar, with a simple sequence of events on the surface and a psychological structure underneath to tackle the serious business of stress management.

Rationale of the programme

It seems unlikely that the purpose of life is to fill ourselves with stress. Stress management starts with sitting quietly and reflecting on the positive and satisfying aspects of life as a way of letting go our stressful thoughts. In quiet, reflective sessions, listening to the audio relaxation tracks, students are invited to look beyond themselves and see the pathway to a low stress life.

A small group of students relaxing together

When a small group of students listens together to a relaxation recording, this provides an opportunity for discussion afterwards about the calm feelings and pleasant thoughts which came to mind during the relaxation sequence. This discussion might occupy a few minutes immediately after the relaxation, or later the same day, during mealtime or instead of watching some of the usual evening’s TV.

Sharing experiences of stress and its management with your fellow students can help release tension and act as an extra stress management technique.

Routine precautions

Do not listen to the recorded relaxation scripts while driving or controlling a vehicle.

Do not start or continue a relaxation session when to do so would distract you from, or be incompatible with, looking after yourself. For example, if you have left something on the stove you are free to set aside the relaxation session and deal with that (see Ending a session ahead of schedule, p 000).

Take care if you or anyone with you suffers from asthma, epilepsy or panic attacks, because relaxation can exacerbate or activate these conditions in rare cases (Palmer and Cooper, 2007).

The next section informs you in straightforward terms how to run through a relaxation session.

The basics of taking part in a relaxation session

Find a reasonably quiet place at home, or wherever you live. Sit or lie down, get as comfortable as possible, listen to the Track 1 relaxation recording and follow what it says. After the recording finishes you may like to sit quietly for a few moments and reflect on your thoughts during relaxation.

If your relaxation was in the company of a few other students you might share your experiences of relaxation. How easy was it to relax, what nice pictures you may have seen in your mind’s eye and so on.

For the second and subsequent sessions, choose the time intervals which suit you. Session 2 could take place the following day or a week later. You repeat the process, listening to the Session 2 relaxation recording. Continue like that through to Session 5 (exam stress) to complete the sequence.

If you are part of a group of students and you feel in the mood, you could progress to a member of the group reading aloud one of the relaxation scripts (reprinted at the back of this book) instead of listening to the recording. This can increase the sense of the group working together to help each other in reducing stress.

After the five recorded relaxation sessions have been run through in order for the first time, in the weeks following, you may re-listen to some of the five recordings as a top up, in any order, from time to time as you wish.

Ending a session ahead of schedule

It may be that your phone rings, or someone knocks on your door and you have to leave the room to attend to something before the relaxation session is due to end. It is important to bring yourself out of the relaxation state before you start another task. You can do this by reading aloud to yourself the last paragraph from script for the relaxation recording: Track 1, which is:

In a moment I am going to count out loud from 1–10.

When I say the number 10, keeping hold of your calm feelings, open your eyes, be refreshed and feel alert as usual.

1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10.

Open your eyes.

You are now refreshed, fully alert and ready to do everything as usual.

You are now refreshed, fully alert and ready to do everything as usual.

In fact it may be preferable if you turn off your phone or turn down the volume while you are relaxing and hang a ‘Do not disturb’ sign on the door. A session lasts only 15–20 minutes. It will probably be alright for you to be out of circulation for such a short time.

Choosing what to think

The five sessions are arranged in a sequence, with each session following a similar format which invites you to do two things: relax your muscles and ‘choose what to think’. Choosing what to think means, for example, choosing to think about something positive and pleasant, say recalling a nice picture to your mind’s eye, rather than thinking about something stressful.

In each successive audio recording there is repetition of wording from the previous script followed by some new wording. This repetition is intentional; it is important and it is not a ‘filler’. Repetition gives you practice at muscle relaxation and choosing what to think. With practice you improve these stress management skills. In successive scripts the wording moves on from a pleasant picture in your mind’s eye, to inviting you to think about a nice phrase or saying and so on. With each new wording the ‘choosing what to think’ changes to provide a developing stress management sequence.

The exam stress session

Stress management for exams requires a build up of stress management skills over a period of time before you learn the technique specific to exam stress. The audio track for Session 5 is the exam stress session, but this is not a free standing session. You need to do Sessions 1–4 before starting Session 5.

After you have built up your relaxation and choosing what to think skills over the four preceding sessions, the audio track for Session 5 guides you in how to use the ‘touch on the wrist’ as a relaxation prompt or reminder which can enable you to take your relaxation with you and feel relaxed anywhere, even travelling to an exam. The touch on the wrist technique is a portable stress reducer. You don’t have to be in a quiet room, close your eyes or lie down to feel relaxed.

If you think that you might experience exam stress, you need to start getting practice on Session 1 when you start feeling worried. Doing one session per week you would take five weeks to get through this programme. Best to allow plenty of time and start on this programme, say, six to ten weeks or longer before the exams. If you are planning to take exams in the later stages of your school career and the school offers mock exams, that is a good opportunity to start practising your stress management skills in preparation for the mocks.

Preparation is the key

There is no avoiding the fact that good preparation and study, well in advance of the exams, may be the most effective way of reducing exam stress. If you are in the later stages of your school career, many schools have revision, exam technique and preparation guidelines which are important and can be used in conjunction with this programme.

As shown in Figure 1.1, students need to work sensibly and systematically from the start of each term.

Figure 1.1 Three stages for dealing with exam stress

The next step is to listen to the relaxation tracks 1–5 in the weeks or months running up to the exam. To remain calm travelling to, just before and during the exam, you can use the ‘touch on the wrist’ method of stress management which is taught to you in the Session 5 audio track.

Why use ‘touch on the wrist’ for exam stress?

In Sessions 1–4 you listen to the audio Tracks 1–4 in numerical order, over a period of time, giving you practice at relaxation and choosing what to think. In Session 5, the audio track builds on your skills by adding the ‘touch on the wrist’ stress management technique. This is the exam stress management technique. The touch on the wrist is a portable stress management technique. It is a tangible reminder of your nice thoughts and feelings which you can take with you after the session is over.

When you have learnt this technique during an audio session, you simply touch yourself on the wrist anytime after the session is over and stress can be reduced in response to that touch. The difference from an audio relaxation session is that the touch on the wrist does ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1. A brief overview of the stress management programme
• 2. The contents of a stress management session
• 3. Life can be stressful
• 4. Getting to grips with stress
• 5. The big picture on stress
• 6. What the experts say about stress
• 7. Students relaxing together
• 8. I am too busy for stress management
• 9. Choosing what to think
• 10. Unpacking the philosophy
• The relaxation scripts
• References
• Disclaimer
• Index